Assam girl Priyanka Das, who hit the headlines recently for ‘developing navigation of Rafale fighter jets’ has actually nothing to do with the military technology as reported in the media.
Priyanka is a PhD research scholar who is working for Safran and not Rafale as reported in the media. She, in fact, made it clear that she had nothing to do with developing “navigation of Rafale fighter jets.”
“The news coverage that I worked on the Rafale was misinterpreted, I guess, because I work for Safran and President Macron’s visit popularized the Rafale, making people associate Safran with only the Rafale,” Priyanka said in her WhatsApp message sent to Northeast Now.
French national A Gallant, who has also gone through the news on Priyanka Das, wrote in his mail, “First and foremost, she doesn’t work on Rafale aircrafts. Second she wasn’t granted French citizenship upon working on Rafale tech, since she didn’t work on Rafale at all. She does a PhD on Precise Point Positioning at Safran however.”
The Assam girl is currently in her first year of PhD, on a CIFRE contract with Safran Electronics and Defense, directed by Prof Eric Chaumette of ISAE-SUPAERO, and co-supervised by Prof Silvère Bonnabel of Mines ParisTech.
The title of her PhD is ‘Robust and Precise Navigation using Tightly-coupled Hybridization of Inertial and GNSS Phase Measurements’.